It was Wagon Mound Sal—she got the prefix later and was plain “Sal” at the time—who took up laundry-labours when Benson Annie became a wife. And this tells of the wooing and wedding of Riley Bent with Sallie of Wagon Mound.
Wagon Mound Sal prevailed, as stated, the mistress of a laundry. And it was there Riley Bent first beheld her, as she was putting a tubful of the blue woollen shirts affected by the males of her region through a second suds. On this occasion Riley's appearance was due to a misunderstanding. He was foggy with drink, and looked in on a theory that the place was a store which made a specialty of the sale of shirts.
“What for a j'int is this?” asked Riley as he entered.
“It's a laundry,” replied Sal; and then observing that Riley Bent was in his cups, she continued with delicate firmness; “an' if you-all ain't mighty keerful how you line out, you'll shorely get a smoothin' iron direct.”
Nothing daunted by the lady's candour, Riley Bent sat down on a furloughed tub which reposed bottom up in one corner. In the course of a conversation, whereof he furnished the questions, and Sal the short, inhospitable replies, it occurred that she and Riley Bent became mutually, albeit dimly, known to one another.
During the three months following, Riley Bent was much and persistently in the laundry of Wagon Mound Sal. Wolfville, eagle-eyed in the softer and more dulcet phenomena of life, looked confidently for a wedding. So in truth did Sal, emulous of Benson Annie. Also Sal was a clear-minded, resolute young lady; and having one day concluded to take Riley Bent for better or for worse, she lost no time in bringing matters to a focus.
“You're a maverick?” she one day asked, suddenly looking up from her ironing. Sal's tones were steady and cool, but it was noticed that she burnt a hole in the bosom of Doc Peets's shirt while waiting a reply. “You-all ain't married none?”
“Thar ain't no squaw has ever been able to rope, throw an' run her brand on me!” said Riley Bent. “Which I'm shorely a maverick!”
“Whatever then is the matter of you an' me dealin'?” asked Sal, coming around to Riley Bent's side of the ironing table.
That personage surveyed her in a thoughtful maze.
“You're a long horn, an' for that much so be I,” he said at last, as one who meditates. “Neither of us would grade for corn-fed in anybody's yards!”
Then came another long pause, during which, with his eyes fixedly gazing into Wagon Mound Sal's, Riley Bent gave himself to the unwonted employment of thinking. At last he shook his head until the little gold bells on his bullion hatband tinkled in a dubious, uncertain way, as taking their tone from the wearer.
“Which the idee bucks me plumb off!” he remarked, with a final deep breath; and then with no further word Riley repaired to the Red Light Saloon and became dejectedly yet deeply drunk.
For a month Wolfville saw naught of Riley Bent. He was supposed to be two-score miles away on the range with his cattle. Wagon Mound Sal, with a trace of grimness about the mouth, conducted her laundry, and, in the absence of competition, waxed opulent. She looked confidently for the return of Riley Bent; as what woman, knowing her spells and powers, would have not.
At last he came. Sal, as well as Wolfville, learned of his presence by a mellow whoop at the far end of the single street. Sal was subsequently gratified by a view of him as he and a comrade, one Rice Hoskins, slid from their saddles and entered the Red Light Saloon.
Wagon Mound Sal was offended at this; he should have come straight to her. But beyond slamming her irons unreasonably as she replaced them on the range, she made no sign.
To give Riley Bent justice, he had done little during the month of his absence save think of Wagon Mound Sal. Whether he pursued the evanescent steer, or organised the baking powder biscuit of his day and kind, Wagon Mound Sal ran ever in his thoughts like a torrent. But he couldn't bring himself to the notion of a wife; not even if that favoured woman were Wagon Mound Sal.
“Seems like bein' married that a-way,” he explained to Rice Hoskins, as they discussed the business about their camp-fire, “is so onnacheral.”
“That's whatever!” assented Rice Hoskins.
“But,” said Riley Bent after a pause; “I reckon I'd better ride in an' tell her she don't get me none, an' end the game.”
“That's whatever!”
It was deference to this view which gained Wolfville the pleasure of the presence of Riley Bent and Rice Hoskins on the occasion named. It had been Riley Bent's plan—having first acquired what stimulant he might crave—to leave Rice Hoskins to the companionship of the barkeeper, while he repaired briefly to Wagon Mound Sal, and expressed a determination never to wed. But after the first drink he so far modified the programme as to decide, instead, to write a letter.
“You see!” he said, “writin' a letter shows a heap more respect. An' then ag'in, if I goes personal, she might get all wrought up an' lay for me permiscus a whole lot.”
The flaw in this letter plan became apparent. Neither Riley Bent nor Rice Hoskins could write. They made application to Black Jack, the barkeeper, to act as amanuensis. But he saw objection, and hesitated.
“I reckon I'll pass the deal, gents,” said Black Jack, “if you-alls don't mind. The grand jury is goin' to begin their round-up over in Tucson next week, an' they'd jest about call it forgery.”
At last as a solution, Rice Hoskins drew a rude picture in ink of a woman going one way, and a man with a big hat and disreputable spurs, going the other; what he called an “Injun letter.” This work of art he regarded with looks of sagacity and satisfaction.
“If she was an Injun,” said the artist, “she'd sabe that picture mighty quick. That means: 'You-all take your trail an' I'll take mine.'”
“Which it does seem plain as old John Chisholm's 'Fence-rail Brand,'” remarked Riley Bent. “Now jest make a tub by her, an' mark me with a 4-bar-J, the same bein' my brand; then she'll shorely tumble. Thar's nothin' like ropin' with a big loop; then if you miss the horns, you're mighty likely to fasten by the feet.”
The missive was despatched to Wagon Mound Sal by hand of a Mexican. Then Riley Bent and Rice Hoskins restored their flagged spirits with liquor.
Riley Bent and Rice Hoskins drank a vast deal. And it came to pass, by virtue of this indiscretion, that Rice Hoskins later, while Riley Bent was still thoughtfully over his cups at the Red Light, rode his broncho into the New York Store. In the plain line of objection to this, Jack Moore, the Marshal, shot Rice Hoskins' pony. As the animal fell it pinned Rice Hoskins to the floor by his leg; in this disadvantageous position he emptied his pistol at Jack Moore, and of course missed.
Moore was in no sort an idle target. He was a painstaking Marshal, and showed his sense of duty at this time by putting four bullets through the reckless bosom of Rice Hoskins; the staccate voices of their Colt's six-shooters melted into each other until they sounded as one.
“I never could shoot none with a pony on my laig,” observed Rice Hoskins.
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Then a splash of blood stained his sun-coloured moustache; his empty pistol rattled on the board floor; his head dropped on his arm, and Rice Hoskins was dead.
It was at this crisis that Riley Bent, startled by the artillery as he sat in the Red Light, came whirling to the scene on his pony. The duel was over before he set foot in stirrup. He saw at a glance that Rice Hoskins was only a memory. Had he been romantic, or a sentimentalist, Riley Bent would have shot out the hour with Jack Moore, the Marshal. And had there been one spark of life in the heart of Rice Hoskins to have fought over, Riley Bent would have stood in the smoke of his own six-shooter all day and taken what Fate might send. As it was, however, he curbed his broncho in mid-speed so bluntly, the Spanish bit filled its mouth with blood. It spun on its hind hoofs like a top. Then, as the long spurs dug to its ribs, it whizzed off in the opposite direction; out of camp like an arrow. The last bullet in Jack Moore's pistol splashed on a silver dollar in Riley Bent's pocket as he turned his pony.
“Whenever I reloads my pistol,” said Jack Moore to Old Man Enright, who had come up, “I likes to reload her all around; so I don't regyard that last cartridge as no loss.”
Wagon Mound Sal was deep in a study of Rice Hoskins' “Injun letter” when the shooting took place. The missive's meaning was not so easy to make out as its hopeful authors had believed. When the deeds of Jack Moore were related to her, however, the brow of Wagon Mound Sal took on an angry flush. She sent a message to Jack Moore asking him to call at once.
“Whatever do you mean?” she demanded of Jack Moore, as he entered the laundry, “a-stampedin' of Riley Bent out of camp that a-way? Don't you know I was intendin' to marry him? Yere he's been gone a month, an' yet the minute he shows up you have to take to cuttin' the dust 'round his moccasins with your six-shooter, an' away he goes ag'in. He jest nacherally seizes on your gun-play for a good excuse. It's shore enough to drive one plumb loco!”
Jack Moore looked decidedly bothered.
“Of course, Sal,” he said at last in a deprecatory way, “you-all onderstands that when I takes to shakin' the loads outen my six-shooter at Riley Bent, I does it offishul. An' I'm free to say, that I was that wropped and preoccupied like with my dooties as Marshal at the time, I never thinks once of them nuptials you med'tates with Riley Bent. If I had I would have downed his pony with that last shot an' turned him over to you. But perhaps it ain't too late.”
It was the next afternoon. Riley Bent was reclining in his camp in the TrÈs Hermanas. Grey, keen eyes watched him from behind a point of rocks. Suddenly a mouthful of white smoke puffed from the point of rocks, and something hard and positive broke Riley Bent's leg just above the knee. The blow of the bullet shocked him for a moment, but the next, with a curse in his mouth, and a six-shooter in each hand, he tumbled in behind a boulder to do battle with his assailant. With the crack of the Winchester which accompanied the phenomena of smoke-puff and broken leg, came the voice of Jack Moore, Marshal.
“Hold up your hands, thar!” said Moore. “Up with 'em; I shan't say it twice!”
Riley Bent could not obey; he had taken ten seconds off to faint.
When he revived Jack Moore had claimed his pistols and was calmly setting the bones of the broken leg; devoting the woollen shirts in the war-bags on his saddle to be bandages, and making splints of cedar bark. These folk of the plains and mountains, far from the surgeon, often set each other's, or, for that matter, their own bones, when a fall from a pony, or some similar catastrophe, furnishes the call.
“If you-all needed me,” observed Riley Bent peevishly, when a little later Jack Moore was engaged over bacon and flap-jacks for the sundown meal, “whatever was the matter of sayin' so? Thisyere idee of shootin' up a gent without notice or pow-wow is plumb onlegal. An' I'll gamble on it, ten to one!”
“Well!” said Jack Moore, as he deftly tossed a flap-jack in the air and caught it in the frying-pan again, “I didn't aim to take no chances of chagrinin' one who loves you, by lettin' you get away. Then, ag'in, my own notion is that it might sorter hasten the bridal some. Thar's nothin' like a bullet in a party's frame for makin' him feel romantic an' sentimental. It softens his nature a heap, an' sets him to yearnin' for female care.
“Which you've been shootin me up to be married!” responded Riley Bent in tones of disgust.
“That's straight!” retoited Jack Moore, as he slid the last flap-jack into the invalid's tin plate. “You've been pesterin' 'round Wagon Mound Sal ontil that lady has become wropped in you. She confides to me cold that she's anxious to make a weddin' of it, which is all the preliminary necessary in Arizona. You are goin' back to Wolfville with me tomorry on a buck-board,—which will be sent on yere from the stage station,—an' after Doc Peets goes over your laig ag'in, you an' Wagon Mound Sal are goin' to become man an' wife like a landslide. You have bred hopes in that lady's bosom, an' you've got to make 'em good. That's all thar is to this play; an' you don't get your guns ag'in ontil you're a married man.”
Jack Moore, firm, direct and decided, had a great effect in fixing the wandering fancies of Riley Bent. He thoughtfully masticated his flap-jack a moment, and then asked:
“S'pose I arches my back an' takes to buckin' at these yere abrupt methods in my destinies; s'pose I quits the deal cold?”
“In which eevent,” responded Jack Moore, with an air of iron confidence, “we merely convenes the Stranglers an' hangs you for luck.”
But Riley Bent was softened and his mind made fully up. Whether it was the sentimental influence of Jack Moore's bullet, which Doc Peets subsequently dug out; or whether Riley was touched by the fact that Wagon Mound Sal, herself, brought over the buckboard to convey him to Wolfville, may never be known. What was certain, however, was that Riley Bent came finally to the conclusion to wed. He told Wagon Mound Sal so while on the buckboard going back.
“Which it's shorely doubtful,” said Wagon Mound Sal, “if any man is worth the trouble. An' this yere is my busiest day, too!”
There was great rejoicing in the wareroom of the New York Store. A whole box of candles blazed gloriously from the walls. Old Man Enright gave the bride away, Benson Annie appeared to look on, while Faro Nell supported Sal as bridesmaid. As usual, in any hour of sacred need, a preacher was obtained from Tucson.
“An' you can bet that pastor knows his business!” said Old Monte, the stage driver, who had been commissioned to bring one over. “He's a deep-water brand, an' he's all right! I takes my steer when I seelects him from the barkeep of the Golden Rod saloon, an' he'd no more give me the wrong p'inter, that a-way, than he'd give me the wrong bottle.”
Doc Peets's offering to the bride was a bullet. It was formerly the property of Jack Moore. It was the one he conferred on Riley Bent that evening in the foothills of the TrÈs Hermanas.
“Keep it!” said Doc Peets to the bride. “It's what sobers him, an' takes the frivolity outen him, an' makes him know his own heart.”
“An' I shorely reckons you're right that a-way, Doc,” said Jack Moore, some hours after the wedding as the two turned from the laundry whither Moore had repaired to return Riley Bent his pistols; “I shore reckons you're right a whole lot. I knows a gent in the states, an' he tells me himse'f how he goes projectin' 'round, keepin' company with a lady for a year, an' ain't thinkin' none speshul of marryin' her. One day somebody gets plumb tired of the play an' shoots him some, after which he simply goes about pantin' to lead that lady to the altar; that's straight!”
